


A Journey of Two Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Kidnapping

by FleuretteFfoulkes



Category: The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Road Trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27448891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleuretteFfoulkes/pseuds/FleuretteFfoulkes
Summary: "Could have fooled me," Chauvelin snarled."Yes, I have, on multiple occasions," Blakeney said. "Now where were we? Ah, yes. Thirty-one bottles of beer on the wall, thirty-one bottles of beer..."(In which Chauvelin gets kidnapped from an Arizona rest stop and dragged along on the road trip from hell.)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: Trope Bingo: Round Fifteen





	A Journey of Two Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Kidnapping

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the square "Road Trip" on my Trope Bingo card.

They were waiting at the desert rest stop near the Arizona border when Chauvelin arrived. In retrospect, perhaps he ought to have expected it. It was the sort of gutsy move that had made the Scarlet Pimpernel famous across the internet.

There were two sedans and an SUV—all unoccupied—in the parking lot when Chauvelin parked his cruiser, and he didn't recognize any of them. He didn't bother to call in and let anyone know he was stopping; he planned to be a minute or two at the most, just using the restroom and getting back on the road.

He expected the restroom to have at least one person in it, given that the vehicles' occupants were nowhere else to be seen, and sure enough, the restroom's single stall was occupied. Chauvelin shrugged, stepped towards the urinal, not caring that he was thus placing his back to the stall—

"Hey, it's that short guy with the funny French name!" exclaimed a voice that Chauvelin hadn't expected to be within a hundred miles, much less directly behind him. "Shovelin, right?" Percy Blakeney's hand landed heavily on Chauvelin's shoulder. "Imagine running into you here," he added, applying enough pressure that Chauvelin was forced to follow Blakeney's leading as he steered him back out the door towards the parking lot.

Three men had miraculously appeared where previously the place had been deserted, and all of them were Blakeney's cronies. "This is kidnapping a federal agent," Chauvelin snarled as he was inexorably pushed towards the SUV.

"Kidnapping a corrupt federal agent," Blakeney said lightly, one hand now in the small of Chauvelin's back propelling him forwards, the other dipping in and out of Chauvelin's pockets. Chauvelin felt his phone, vape pen, wallet, and badge all disappear to wherever Blakeney had chosen to secrete them on his own person.

"Hi Chauvelin," Andrew Ffoulkes said, sliding open the side door of the SUV. "Glad you could join us."

Chauvelin was tempted to snarl something rude in response, but he suspected that revealing the depth of his frustration could only serve to entertain them. Instead, he favored Ffoulkes with a short nod.

Dewhurst and Blakeney's brother-in-law St. Just were the other two people who had been waiting, and now they closed in behind Chauvelin in a tight semi-circle. "Andrew's driving," Blakeney said, "and I'm afraid Armand has claimed shotgun—not you, of course, you haven't had a chance to; I mean the other Armand, the one I like better. And then Tony absolutely has to have a seat next to a window—he gets motion sick you know, poor fellow—and then I think in the interest of security, it would be best if I sat next to the door. So that means you get to choose between sitting in the center back seat and—well—I guess you're stuck with the center back seat. I suppose we ought to have tried to leave you a bit more of a choice, as our guest and all. But I'm sure you'll like it! You get to sit next to me, after all. I'm very good company on road trips."

Chauvelin suppressed a shudder, first at the thought of being stuck that close to Blakeney, and second at the mention of road trips. How long was he going to be stuck in this car with his kidnappers?

Quite some time, it turned out. "Were you headed for Chicago to meet with your handlers?" Blakeney asked, sliding the back off of Chauvelin's phone with skillful hands and taking out the battery and SIM card. "What a coincidence, we're headed there too. We might as well take you there." In front of them, Ffoulkes politely signaled with his blinker before merging back onto the freeway, despite there being nobody else around for miles. Blakeney handed the pieces of Chauvelin's phone up to St. Just, who tossed them one by one out the window.

"Whatever you want me to do for you in Chicago, I won't do it," Chauvelin said firmly.

"Of course not," Blakeney said, shrugging so vigorously that he (no doubt intentionally) poked Chauvelin in the side with his elbow. "Don't worry, you've got plenty of time between here and there to change your mind."

An hour in, somewhere in Arizona's interminable desert, Blakeney started a singalong of "Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall." Every single one of his flunkeys joined in, to Chauvelin's frustration and confusion; he had thought that Dewhurst or Ffoulkes, at least, might be too mature for such transparent provocation. Chauvelin closed his eyes and did his best to breathe evenly. In. Out. In. Out.

He made it down to thirty-one bottles—which was an achievement worthy of recognition, he thought—before he snapped. "You're idiots!" He screamed. "You're all idiots. How can a bunch of obnoxious imbeciles like you defy the federal government?"

"There, there," Blakeney said, stopping singing and patting him on the hand. "I know this must be traumatic for you to discover, but you don't actually represent the government, just its more corrupt fraudulent elements. And also, I'm not actually an idiot."

"Could have fooled me," Chauvelin snarled.

"Yes, I have, on multiple occasions," Blakeney said. "Now where were we? Ah, yes. Thirty-one bottles of beer on the wall, thirty-one bottles of beer..."

Chauvelin put his head in his hands.

After the song was over, Chauvelin feared that Blakeney would simply move on to "This Is the Song That Never Ends," but instead there was blessed silence. Blakeney pulled a phone out of his pocket and tapped away at it for a while, being careful to keep the screen angled away from Chauvelin. Chauvelin did his best to ignore everybody in the car, which was difficult because there was no direction that he could gaze where he didn't end up looking at one or the other of them. Finally he settled on staring straight out the front windshield and feigning extreme interest in the desert landscape and the continually unrolling highway.

Two hours in, Blakeney pulled Chauvelin's vape pen out of his pocket and held it out to him. Chauvelin blinked at him for a second, almost reached out for it (he could really, _really_ use some nicotine about now), then clasped his hands tightly in his lap to control any further impulses in that direction. "No thank you," Chauvelin said tightly. There was absolutely no way he was accepting that thing now that it had been in Blakeney's possession, even if Blakeney _had_ been in his line of sight the entire time.

"You know, it's almost as if you still haven't forgiven me for the time I put hot sauce in it," Blakeney said. He leaned back lazily, and rested his arm along the back of Chauvelin's seat. Chauvelin leaned forward as subtly as he could, though he was sure it was all too obvious to the observant Blakeney. "My dear Shovelin," Blakeney continued, "that was a year and a half ago! Didn't your mother ever teach you about forgiveness and how it is a balm for the soul?"

"My mother is dead," Chauvelin said.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Blakeney said, as if this was news and he hadn't carefully researched every detail of Chauvelin's life years ago. "How did it happen?"

If Chauvelin hadn't been outnumbered four to one, he would have punched Blakeney. Instead, he settled for glaring silently into the middle distance. The Arizona desert continued to be as horribly boring as it had been for the previous eternity.

"You know, I was thinking," Blakeney said sometime after dark. Nightfall had made the view out the front windshield even more boring than before, but Chauvelin still stared steadfastly forward. St. Just was driving now; he and Ffoulkes had traded an hour or so earlier.

"Congratulations," Chauvelin snarled after a minute, when no further comment was forthcoming. "That's a real achievement for you."

"You know what this road trip has been missing?"

"Prompt consequences for kidnapping and menacing a federal agent?"

"Menacing? And here I thought we were being extremely kind and polite to you. I even gave you back some of your belongings; it's not my fault you didn't want to vape."

Chauvelin could _kill_ for nicotine by now. He cast about for something cutting to say in response, couldn't think of anything suitable, realized he was immensely irritated by the glimpse of Blakeney's grinning mug in his peripheral vision, and settled for crossing his arms and turning his back on Blakeney.

This, unfortunately, left him directly facing Dewhurst.

"I don't know, Percy," Dewhurst said, "what _has_ this road trip been missing?"

"Poetry," Blakeney said. "A suitable occasion deserves a suitable poem. Maybe another verse to the one about seeking him here and there. They look in a rest stop, they look in a van, damn that Pimpernel is a brilliant man. Hmm, the meter's rough but it has promise, don't you think?"

"I like it lots," Dewhurst said, looking right at Chauvelin. He sounded like he had an evil grin, but fortunately it was too dark for Chauvelin to see it.

"Shouldn't you be looking out the window?" Chauvelin asked Dewhurst in sudden worry, remembering Blakeney's earlier comment. "Surely your supreme leader wouldn't want you to sacrifice yourself to carsickness even for the sake of his poetry."

"Nah, I feel fine," Dewhurst said. "For now, I mean. But hey, your clothes aren't that expensive if they get ruined, and Percy said it's fine if I vomit in his car as long as I pay to get it cleaned afterwards."

Chauvelin stared in his direction for a moment, then flung his head back against the back of the seat with a huffed sigh. If he closed his eyes, then he couldn't see _any_ of them. Of course, then he couldn't see what they were doing, either, but at this point that seemed a small price to pay. Maybe he would even fall asleep, though that seemed unlikely. Or maybe he could bang his head against the back of the seat a couple more times and see if there was any part of it that was hard enough to knock himself out with. Actually, that sounded like a really good idea right about now.

"I like the second line," Blakeney said. "I mean, I _am_ brilliant. But this is an SUV, not a van. And Chauvelin didn't look in it. What else rhymes with van?"

"Ban, can, dan, fan," Ffoulkes said from the front seat.

"Ran," St. Just said. "Like, 'He stopped at the rest stop, he didn't ran—damn, et cetera.'"

"Armand, I know French is your first language, but you really need to go back to grammar school," Blakeney said. "Not, like, the elementary school kind of grammar school, but the kind of school where they actually teach you grammar."

"Hey, in my defense, I'm focusing on the road, not the grammar."

Chauvelin was beginning to feel curiously numb. Maybe he _had_ hit his head. He kept his eyes closed and let the conversation wash over him. Maybe if he was very quiet, they would forget he was here, or at least get tired of tormenting him.

"Chauvelin, what do you think? What's your favorite rhyme for man?"

Or not. Chauvelin kept his arms crossed and his eyes closed. He couldn't remember how long it took to get from Arizona to Chicago, but he was pretty sure the answer was way the hell too long. Surely he could ignore Blakeney's questions, and Blakeney's finger poking urgently at Chauvelin's side for another...what, twenty-four hours? Surely no more than thirty.

"What about 'than'? Percy, I dare you to end the first line with a conjunction or a preposition."

This was going to be the longest day of Chauvelin's life.


End file.
